The Conservatives are determined to win the battle for Britain’s future,
writes David Cameron in the Sunday Telegraph.

There has been a barrage of advice this weekend following the Eastleigh by-election. Some say the Conservative Party should veer right. Some say the Government should abandon the course it’s on.

Some say spend more. Some say spend less.

To all of these pieces of advice, my answer is simple. We are engaged in a battle for Britain’s future. It is a battle to defeat some of the most dangerous challenges in our history. And it is a battle we will win only if we reject the cynicism, the political calculation and the easy ways out – and stick to the course we are on.

I totally understand the concerns people have. The person reading this who is concerned that when their children leave college they won’t be able to find a good job. The parents with frozen wages who feel the bills getting tighter by the month. The father who wants his daughter to grow up in a country where aspiration is real, where she can rise up through her own talents and make a success of her life.

The millions of people who became fed up with out-of-control immigration and welfare over the past decade and just want these things sorted out.

I know who these people are. They are people who feel that Britain, this great country we love, was going downhill for years under Labour and is not being fixed fast enough by the government I lead. If they were concerned about welfare, they were accused of not caring. If they were worried about out-of-control immigration, they were called racist. If they wanted to talk about Britain being great again, they were made to feel nostalgic and old-fashioned.

These people – hard-working, decent, patriotic people – are who the Conservative party has always been for. We are on the side of those who want to work hard and get on in life. I understand how impatient they are for change, for things to feel tangibly better, not just on the government graphs but in their lives. I get it because I am impatient for change, too.

But the battle for Britain’s future will not be won in lurching to the Right, nor by some cynical attempt to calculate the middle distance between your political opponents and then planting yourself somewhere between them.

That is lowest common denominator politics – and it gets you nowhere. The right thing to do is to address the things people care about; to fix yourself firmly in what Keith Joseph called the “common ground” of politics.

And that’s what we have done. We are the only party simultaneously committed to proper investment in the NHS and bringing down immigration. We are the only party simultaneously asserting Britain’s interests in Europe and seriously investing in a better education for poorer children.

It’s not about being Left-wing or Right-wing – it’s about being where the British people are. And where the British people rightly are on all these issues is where the Conservative Party is, too.

So tacking Right or Left is not an option. And neither is abandoning the course we’re on. The battle for Britain’s future will not be won, as some other parties claim, through some easy way out. The truth is that those who sell the idea of a quick fix - whether in the Labour party or anywhere else – are taking people for fools. You can’t just spend more money. You can’t slash taxes without caring what happens to borrowing.

Neither can you build a genuinely strong economy by cutting yourself off from vital markets or new technologies, or by backing off from vital decisions about infrastructure, housing or planning.

You can’t just turn your back on the world. These are sure-fire recipes for decline. Real patriotism isn’t ducking your problems — it’s facing up to them. And the British people know the scale of the problems we face: one of the biggest deficits in the developed world; one of the least affordable welfare systems in Europe; an education system that was allowed to slide into mediocrity for years on end — all set against the backdrop of a fiercely competitive world and great shifts in wealth from West to East.

We will only fix these deep-rooted problems — and compete in this global race — through hard work, patience, and seeing through tough but necessary decisions. This is a serious moment in Britain’s history. It needs a serious government with a serious plan — and the resolve to see it through. That’s what we have.

Already the deficit has been cut by a quarter. More than a million new jobs have been created in the private sector since we took office. We’ve capped welfare so those on benefits can’t take home more than the average family earns. Thousands of academy schools have been opened.

The qualifications system is being overhauled. Just this week it was confirmed that net migration has been cut by a third. And while doing these big, country-changing things, we are doing everything possible to help people who are struggling with the cost of living: helping to freeze council tax for three years in a row; freezing fuel duty; cutting the income tax bills of 24 million taxpayers; taking two million of the lowest paid out of tax altogether.

These are not claims or promises: they are facts. We are turning the tide on years of decline — and building a Britain for those who work hard and want to get on. And we need to go further. We need to get more houses built. We need to build new roads and railways and energy connections. Some reading this may not like that; but as I have made clear, this is not a popularity contest but a battle for Britain’s future.

That is what everything this Government does comes back to: the future. We are looking at the horizon, not tomorrow’s headlines; doing what’s right for the long-term. Thirty years ago, Margaret Thatcher said that we should be “in the business of planting trees, for our children and grandchildren, or we have no business to be in politics at all”.

I couldn’t agree more. In 30 years’ time, I want people to be able to look back at this government and see that we paid down our debts, helped create millions of jobs, sorted out welfare, made our schools world-beating and built homes for a generation.

Doing this kind of work might not earn you popularity points in by-elections, but it’s what I’m in politics for: making the country we love as great as it can be.